Hey all. I’m Nike from [DnT] and this is my guide for a DPS Necromancer for dungeon speed runs with organized groups. Before the avalanche of criticism comes in, I would like to make a few preliminary statements regarding this build.

1. I assume a 1/3/1 team composition of 1 Guardian/3 melee DPS / 1 Mesmer. The Necro will be used in place of one of the standard Warriors for the purposes of this build. Please don’t complain about elitism or profession discrimination, as this guide assumes that you are interested in doing things as close to optimally as possible.

2. Because of the aforementioned team comp, we DON’T need to trait into things like Blood Magic, or the dumb Death Shroud traits. Why? Because you will cap 25 Might stacks from the warriors, Guardian and Mesmer and your own Blood is Power. You will have perma-Fury from the warriors and Mesmer. And you will have maxed Vuln stacks from the warriors/Mesmer and your own skills. Since we aren’t concerned with traiting for bad party healing or dumb Deathshroud traits we can optimize a bit more for direct melee dps.

3. Necros are still pretty bad. Necros are inferior to Warriors for melee DPS, but there are times when you are stuck with a friend or guildmate who is Necro main and wants to come along. This build will gimp your party the least. I would take any DPS based profession ahead of Necro except Ranger. But again, there ARE times when you have someone who wants to bring their Necromancer, so here you go.

I experimented with 10 in Blood Magic for utility instead of Soul Reaping, but it just wasn’t necessary in organized groups. If you run with pugs or less experienced players, you may want to go 10 in Blood Magic instead of SR.

The Spite traits are pretty straightforward. I don’t personally use the Focus skills except for utility situations or times when the Vuln stacks would be useful, so the recharge time isn’t absolutely essential. Feel free to sub that out for something else, but honestly there isn’t much else useful. Obviously, Close to Death is the all-star in this traitline.

The Curses traits are all about Target the Weak. In an organized group, every boss you fight will have Bleeding, Burning Crippled, Weakness and Vulnerability at least. That makes that trait a 10% damage buff, which is quite exciting. Banshee’s Wail is another allstar. The Warhorn #5 skill is insanely good in a high crit build. Depending on your Might stacks, each hit will crit for 800-1200, which makes up a great deal of DPS that the Necro auto-attack chain lacks. This trait ensures that the skill is up for every boss fight and lasts longer too. Plus, it ensures the enemy will have Crippled, which is necessary to get the most out of Target the Weak. The extra crits it contributes will add weakness through Withering Precision.

Soul Reaping is pretty bad, but it comes with 10% crit damage, which is more valuable than anything in Blood Magic, even if you didn’t get traits. I like faster Deathshroud recharge skills in dungeons or instances where the AOE from Life Transfer is needed more often. If you find yourself using Spectral Grasp or Spectral Wall a lot, feel free to use the 20% spectral cool down trait.

Gear and Consumables:

Full zerker or go home. For consumables, I encourage you to use one of the Butternut Squash Soups for DPS, or Omnombars if you are in a gold farm situation. As always, you should use the dungeon specific potion for whatever instance you are in.

For weaponsets, you will use dagger/horn and dagger/focus. The dagger will have Bloodlust and the offhands will have Force. Having the same Dagger mainhand for both sets will allow you to weapon swap without interrupting your attack chain, which is very useful for maximizing your DPS.

Why Dagger over Axe? Dagger has significantly better DPS with the auto-attack. The Axe DOES stack Vuln, but in an organized group, you are wasting the Vulnerability and it just isn’t needed, especially not at the cost of gimping your DPS. Offhand Warhorn is a DPS monster, no explanation needed as I already covered it. Focus has good utility in the form of boon stripping, vuln stacks and regeneration for your party. Neither of the skills is powerful individually, especially in this team comp, but they are more useful than using dagger offhand and the occasional utility is better than none.

Utility Skills:

Well of Suffering never leaves your bar. The vulnerability is nice, and the damage of the well furthers your DPS. With the warhorn and well going, your screen will fill up with numbers, and that is a good thing.

Blood is Power is also nearly mandatory. While you will usually get 25 might stacks from FGJx2+Guardian staff + Signet of Inspiration the 10 Mights stacks here fill in the gaps and occasional inefficiencies quite nicely. Also, in less organized groups the Might will be significantly more critical as you can’t count on the ideal scenario.

The third slot I keep open and change depending on the encounter. Spectral Wall is fairly meh when a guardian keeps up perma-protection, but it isn’t a bad way to start off a fight as you charge in. Spectral Grasp is an all start, especially in less organized groups where you can’t count on the Mesmer’s curtain or Guardian greatsword to stack the enemies up. Well of Corruption is fairly decent in fights where boon stripping is needed, well of darkness is occasionally useful for large trash pulls like in Ascalon Fractal. The Signet of Spite adding 180 power is my all purpose choice, as it boosts your personal dps around 5%, which is not inconsiderable. And ofcourse, Locust Signet for open world running around because PVE is big.

I use Plague Form as my elite 75% of the time, as the aoe blind is very useful in strong trash pulls like you find in Ascalon fractal or the silver wolf mobs at the start of CoE. Also, a long duration aoe blind is very nice in the CoF p2 Magg event, especially if your group isn’t very organized and people are taking too much damage. On single target bosses, I find Lich Form to be quite good, as it is the highest possible single target dps for the Necro. Just drop the Well of Suffering and Warhorn #5 before you Liche up and you will be doing very strong dps.

Play notes:

This build is pretty squishy. It’s comparable to a Thief, except they have more armor and you have more hit points. You need to be able to dodge all the major boss attacks in order to keep from downing, and if you aren’t experienced or capable of doing that this build isn’t for you quite honestly. Unlike a Mesmer, you don’t have perma-Vigor or invulnerable frames so you have to be very careful about your dodges. If you find that you are dodging perfectly, but running out of dodges, you can replace the Bloodlust sigil with a Sigil of Energy and swap your weapons on cool down, which will give you an extra dodge every 10 seconds.

It is important to maintain your Locust Swarm on recharge, and make sure it is available at the start of every boss fight or major encounter. Blood Is Power when you need it to stay at 25 Might Stacks and use the Well of Suffering to start every boss fight or encounter. Use deathshroud when you run out of dodges and need to avoid dying, or for Life Transfer on cool down when fighting large groups of mobs. Remember, Life Transfer crits will proc Withering Precision, so when fighting large groups of trash mobs the aoe Weakness is a pretty nice defensive buff.

That’s about it. I don’t get to play my Necro in our groups too often, but when I do this is a pretty fun build to play. If you are a poor soul who is a Necro main, doesn’t have a warrior and wants to CoF farm, this is probably your best bet.

This build is nice to see. I actually just started working a Power Necro build a couple days ago. I do PuG a lot and the guild mates I run with do not run quite as optimal builds but I love them so I do run with them and try to help out. I came up with a 30/0/0/15/25 to get a constant 5% damage mod from life force being over 50% and you get more crit damage. It also has some nice regen with life siphon on every single hit. And still gets to about 8500 effective power. Also, I take a staff for ranged and you have a couple more options.

I'm still testing and tweaking but it seems to be working out ok for me,

I will definately be trying out your build for my CoF speed runs. I have War, Grd, and mesmer all fully geared, But Necro is my favorite class that needs a good bit of trait reworking to be on the same level as WAR, GRD, or MES. No stability ..... without taking 30 points in soul reaping and the traits do not coincide with builds like the way WAR does for dps.

Thanks for the feedback. I definitely explored the 5% damage when above 50% life force trait but I found it wasn't worth it. Target the Weak is a 10% bonus most of the time, and the increased crit chance means that your dps is significantly high with 30 in Curses. Also, you should not underestimate the DPS boost of Banshee's Howl.

For example, a fairly typical auto attack chain is 2k, 1.7k+1.7k, 6.6k with my build. Locust Swarm when traited with Banshee's Howl does an additional 1k per .66 seconds for 12 seconds on a 16 second (I believe) cool down. So when you add another 3k to that autoattack chain the damage starts to become very respectable. Sure you can (and should) use Locust Swarm even without the trait because it's so OP, but with the trait it goes from being a burst skill you use at the start of a fight to being sustained DPS, which is what makes the power dagger necro viable in dungeon groups.

Thanks for the feedback. I definitely explored the 5% damage when above 50% life force trait but I found it wasn't worth it. Target the Weak is a 10% bonus most of the time, and the increased crit chance means that your dps is significantly high with 30 in Curses. Also, you should not underestimate the DPS boost of Banshee's Howl.

For example, a fairly typical auto attack chain is 2k, 1.7k+1.7k, 6.6k with my build. Locust Swarm when traited with Banshee's Howl does an additional 1k per .66 seconds for 12 seconds on a 16 second (I believe) cool down. So when you add another 3k to that autoattack chain the damage starts to become very respectable. Sure you can (and should) use Locust Swarm even without the trait because it's so OP, but with the trait it goes from being a burst skill you use at the start of a fight to being sustained DPS, which is what makes the power dagger necro viable in dungeon groups.

And yeah, use a staff for those occasions when melee isn't viable.

Ya I was looking at the options with the 30/30/0/0/10 build. It will definatley do more DPS and would give some different options for gear. I was trying to get a little bit more survivability out of the build. BUT, I do run a Zerker Mesmer and War in FotM highest is 42 now on my war, My GRD is AH healing so pretty much invincible... When I get some time tonight I will play around with it and see how it does.

My concerns were playing with people that do not Min/Max and optimize to the fullest extent. So some knights gear and some healing (15 in Blood) goes a long way.

Have you tried this build in 30+ fractals and harder content than CoF 1? I wonder if Omnomnom Ghosts instead of Squash would be enough survivability with death shroud.

I'll give you some more feedback when I play around with it some tonight.

I have not played in high level fotm with it, but I've used it in cof/coe/hotw/ac and its about the same survivability feeling a Thief has. Maybe a bit more if you use your deathshroud like an on demand block/invuln frame.

I have not played in high level fotm with it, but I've used it in cof/coe/hotw/ac and its about the same survivability feeling a Thief has. Maybe a bit more if you use your deathshroud like an on demand block/invuln frame.

Ya that's what I was thinking. Might run a hybrid with Knights/Zerker for gear then full Zerker accessories. Should be enough sustain to get through the higher level stuff like my War and Mes do. Looks like I have a new weekends project : D

I'm running full zerkers, 30/20/10/10/0, +30%dmg for minions (no +health or skill recharge though) and minion utilites. They're good decoys, have some nice secondary funtions for fractals and push some damage too. Dagger/warhorn+staff.

Love the buffed warhorn too, not tried with weakness on crit, instead I have syphon on crit. I use the traits that cast enfeebling blood, retaliation, remove a condition and fury on DS trigger.

I'm on a crap computer right now so can't view your full trait choices.

I'm finding necro in fractals more fun as you have such unusual class mechanics, like in harpy fractal DS saves you from going down when knocked off the platforms and lich form being excellent for harpy clearing safely, or flesh wurm being immune to the lava in the shamen fractal, melee minions keeping shamen busy and clearing the bubble stacks quickly etc...

I've done the other professions and they're good, but become boring quickly.

Power necro is good and doesn't clash with condition damage users, and has more varied/entertaining choices.

I use the traits that cast enfeebling blood, retaliation, remove a condition and fury on DS trigger.

My opinion is that those traits are good for pugging or random builds or open world soloing. But once you have a team with a guardian (condition removes, defense boons) and warriors (Might, Fury, Banners) you really don't need the DS tricks anymore and can focus on pure dps. Obviously not everyone is going to run with two other warriors/mesmer/guardian so you may have to add self-sufficiency somewhat.

My opinion is that those traits are good for pugging or random builds or open world soloing. But once you have a team with a guardian (condition removes, defense boons) and warriors (Might, Fury, Banners) you really don't need the DS tricks anymore and can focus on pure dps. Obviously not everyone is going to run with two other warriors/mesmer/guardian so you may have to add self-sufficiency somewhat.

Fury was freeRetailiation as nothing else useful for that trait and having high power means it hits hard adding to DPSEnfeeble on DS use as again nothing much better, I don't have issues gaining life force and turns out enfeebling blood has a small packet of aoe damage as well as the conditions, so more AoE dpsRemove condition on DS use was good when you get a shitty 2 min cripple and no way to remove it if no enemies are near. This one I'll probably dump for spiteful removal, not tried it since they nerfed it so not sure if it'll do as a replacement.

So you'd consider this (build in the OP though it's a little out of date now I have seen it) you're most glassy necro build? good to hear.

One thing that might get you some more damage in your build, you mention on the update maxing curses for weakness on crit to buff another 2% damage from target the weak, wouldn't you be ok with only 25 in curses, use weakening shroud for the condition, and then have a spare 5 points to get back you're spectral [email protected]% HP? swapping 5% crit chance for crit damage?

Btw, in the 3rd post you mention a 6.6k hit, I'm assuming you mean from dagger auto chains 3rd attack, is this figure with full 25 might and at least 5 conditions on the target? just seems a little high though I don't use a bloodlust sigil I have force on dagger and fire on warhorn.

Here are some screen shots of the damage I do with this build in boss fights when we have 25ish vuln and 25ish Might stacks...

and

So mid 6k is typical for the 3rd hit and as you can see it can get beyond 7k. iirc I did not have 25 bloodlust stacks against the evolved destroyer, but I did have them against Bjarl. I did have an inquest potion on, so it's possible that Bjarl counts as undead so I wasnt getting that 9% vs him, but I am sure that the Evolved Destroyer counts as inquest.

Sooooo... I tried this in CoF and around doing events and dailies.... It does do good damage. BUT, for me WAR or Mesmer are much better of a choice for group utility and DPS. They just offer waaaaay more. ANET could fix necro with a trait rework and to give a cleave to dagger for THIS BUILD/POWER BUILD. Since AoE is shit w/o a condition build.

Fun to play around with and change it up a bit. But, I found myself really missing War and Mes while running with Necro.

Cheers Nike! Keep up the good work of informing the masses how to build optimally. They will get it eventually.

If we operate under the assumption that your group really needs an "anchor", and that "anchoring" actually works (I have my doubts as to both, but let's leave that aside), why not let the necro play that role? Necros tank like crazy, and that way you're not losing excessive DPS by having two tanky classes, instead of one. I know you don't think guardians can DPS as hard as warriors (which you're wrong about, but I'm not here to debate that yet again), but even you have to admit that a guard will outDPS a necro at the very least.

When did we bring up GRD in this post? It is about Necro and DPS... not tanking or GRD or the DPS potential of GRD...

I'm pretty sure Nike prefaced the entire thing stating

1. I assume a 1/3/1 team composition of 1 Guardian/3 melee DPS / 1 Mesmer. The Necro will be used in place of one of the standard Warriors for the purposes of this build. Please don’t complain about elitism or profession discrimination, as this guide assumes that you are interested in doing things as close to optimally as possible.

When did we bring up GRD in this post? It is about Necro and DPS... not tanking or GRD or the DPS potential of GRD...

I'm pretty sure Nike prefaced the entire thing stating

1. I assume a 1/3/1 team composition of 1 Guardian/3 melee DPS / 1 Mesmer. The Necro will be used in place of one of the standard Warriors for the purposes of this build. Please don’t complain about elitism or profession discrimination, as this guide assumes that you are interested in doing things as close to optimally as possible.

This guy talks about his "optimal" team a lot and from what I understand they basically run 3 DPS warriors, tank guardian, and a Time Warp bot mesmer. If you're going to drop a warrior from that composition, you're better off switching the guardian to DPS role (which IMO he should be in anyway) and putting the necro in the tank role, rather than going DPS necro and tank guardian. The guardian will be able to DPS just as hard as the warriors and not be diminished in any way in his ability to provide defensive boons, while the necro gets to do something he's actually good at.

I'm also aware it's silly to try to tank, that's just how this guild does things and I'm merely working within those parameters. My optimal team comp is nothing like theirs, but I'm not here to discuss that.

Any dungeon I would use this Necro in wouldn't require an anchor Guardian, such as CoF or COE. In those dungeons you can play 5 DPS oriented classes and also in those places cleave is irrelevant too.

I'm also aware it's silly to try to tank, that's just how this guild does things and I'm merely working within those parameters. My optimal team comp is nothing like theirs, but I'm not here to discuss that.

We don't do anything as standard. Each dungeon has it's own optimal configuration and an AH guardian isn't in all of them. FWIW, we do use DPS guardians quite often.

Also, the mesmer is more a Temporal Curtain/Feedback bot than a Time Warp bot.

What kind of DPS build do you guys use for GRD? Sword/X with greatsword then scepter when range is needed?

I can't speak for them, but either 10/30/0/30/0 with hammer/mace or 10/30/10/20/0 with sword/scepter/greatsword would be your best dungeon DPS options. There aren't actually that many variations of the guardian DPS builds, you pretty much always want at least 10 Zeal, 25 Honor, and 20 Honor for pretty much every build, which doesn't leave a ton of room for customization. There's plenty of discussion on it on the Guardian forums, though, I have a couple of guides written up with the best DPS opitons myself.

What kind of DPS build do you guys use for GRD? Sword/X with greatsword then scepter when range is needed?

Our DPS guardian isn't as tuned for personal dps as Guans is, as we use 0/30/0/30/10. We still retain Pure of Voice and 10 in Virtues because there is value in condition removal and Master of Consecrations especially in non-faceroll content like Arah or high level fractals. If all you care about is stuff like CoF and not team support, lose the 5 from Virtues and 5 from honor and and go 10 zeal for more DPS.

Yep what Nike said, this video is an example of fractals where we run one anchor and one dps guardian. For most fractals and most challenging dungeons, you're going to want 10 in virtues for reflects even on your dps build. This video is also a good example of how a guardian anchor works on the Ettin fight since Guang doesn't actually run dungeons, and also why you would want 10 in virtues.

I'll also have a 16 min. Arah path 2 re-record coming in the next couple of days with 1 dps guardian/3 warriors/1 mesmer as well, where it is also obvious you want pure of voice and consecration cooldown/duration since the guardian and mesmer are there for their support skills to allow full melee dps uptime so you can actually speed run. But as Nike said, you don't need an anchor for every dungeon, although it's helpful for high level fractals and a few named dungeons.

If your farming CoF just run 4 wars, if you're doing CoE you don't need virtues because you don't need reflects, but if you do a variety of dungeons and fractals every night then you're going to want condition removal and reflects. Generally people use 0-30-0-30-10 for dps builds since they don't feel like re-traiting constantly and warriors are superior for pure dps once you have the proper utility.

Yep what Nike said, this video is an example of fractals where we run one anchor and one dps guardian. For most fractals and most challenging dungeons, you're going to want 10 in virtues for reflects even on your dps build. This video is also a good example of how a guardian anchor works on the Ettin fight since Guang doesn't actually run dungeons, and also why you would want 10 in virtues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3neN0uTCKk

I'll also have a 16 min. Arah path 2 re-record coming in the next couple of days with 1 dps guardian/3 warriors/1 mesmer as well, where it is also obvious you want pure of voice and consecration cooldown/duration since the guardian and mesmer are there for their support skills to allow full melee dps uptime so you can actually speed run. But as Nike said, you don't need an anchor for every dungeon, although it's helpful for high level fractals and a few named dungeons.

If your farming CoF just run 4 wars, if you're doing CoE you don't need virtues because you don't need reflects, but if you do a variety of dungeons and fractals every night then you're going to want condition removal and reflects. Generally people use 0-30-0-30-10 for dps builds since they don't feel like re-traiting constantly and warriors are superior for pure dps once you have the proper utility.

I'm assuming you use full Zerker gear for your GRD DPS builds?

Thanks for that Strife. I have watched pretty much all of your videos and they have helped me and my guild immensely. I just finished my Sunrise for my GRD and have run all paths of all Dungeons many times. We have 5 Dungeons masters in our small 10 man guild. My wife and I were the first 2 : D. I have a Sword/Torch DPS build I have used on GRD that is posted on the GRD forums as well that I use the same gear as your anchor build and get 7-11k Effective DPS. But I wanted to utilize my Greatsword in a DPS build with Scepter ranged options but the way the trait trees are set up makes that rather difficult. Sword/X and Greatsword.

I can't speak for them, but either 10/30/0/30/0 with hammer/mace or 10/30/10/20/0 with sword/scepter/greatsword would be your best dungeon DPS options. There aren't actually that many variations of the guardian DPS builds, you pretty much always want at least 10 Zeal, 25 Honor, and 20 Honor for pretty much every build, which doesn't leave a ton of room for customization. There's plenty of discussion on it on the Guardian forums, though, I have a couple of guides written up with the best DPS opitons myself.

Thanks GK! I'll try out some ideas. Because the AH build gets a bit boring being that invincible... Very helpful for PuGing and teaching players but I like to do a BIT more DPS while still providing some good party utility.

I've started to really like using minions on a necro power build. In all honesty when I started using them it was out of bordem with the usual power build utility skills.

I've kept using them as I levelled my necro up fractals and they're under estimated I think. I now prefer using them over standard power and condition builds. This is only in PuGs, I'm not into the game enough to join an organised guild.

I thought they'd die a lot, and they do, but they seem to serve several purposes whether it's distraction (triggering the shamens and other bosses melee, absorbing damage (5 AoE limit, I run with 6 minions + any jaggeds that are alive) or even having some use with their utilities, like snaring the veterans who push in the humans on the first part of the grawl fractal, the cliffside fractal keeping the archdiviner pinned down.

Nothing big, but I've managed to finish off the ascalon boss solo at level 28 from 1/4 health just by rotating minions and spamming both sets of weapon skills.

The Flesh wurm is great in the dedge fractal when running bombs, or the ice fractal. I tend to blow the bone minions up on recharge for 2 blast finishers.

One last quite important feature in PuGs is self survivability and since the fix to the blood thirst trait now effecting minions lifesteal I'm able to run full zerkers gear and feel like an AH guardian due to all the little green numbers constantly pumping my health back up. I actually feel that with this build my necro would suit Scholar runes more than my other characters that use them (war, thief, ele,) due to fact that in coming heals are constant from minions and all you own packets of damage too.

They do damage themselves, adding to mine which as full dps gear all adds up to an entertaining, relatively PuG safe setup.

Thanks for that Strife. I have watched pretty much all of your videos and they have helped me and my guild immensely. I just finished my Sunrise for my GRD and have run all paths of all Dungeons many times. We have 5 Dungeons masters in our small 10 man guild. My wife and I were the first 2 : D. I have a Sword/Torch DPS build I have used on GRD that is posted on the GRD forums as well that I use the same gear as your anchor build and get 7-11k Effective DPS. But I wanted to utilize my Greatsword in a DPS build with Scepter ranged options but the way the trait trees are set up makes that rather difficult. Sword/X and Greatsword.

I'll go put my Necro in this build for the occasion I dust her off for a token run when my Mes/Guard & Warrior are reduced to 20. Not sure I can promise any results soon, will be a while before I play her.

I've started to really like using minions on a necro power build. In all honesty when I started using them it was out of bordem with the usual power build utility skills.

I've kept using them as I levelled my necro up fractals and they're under estimated I think. I now prefer using them over standard power and condition builds. This is only in PuGs, I'm not into the game enough to join an organised guild.

I thought they'd die a lot, and they do, but they seem to serve several purposes whether it's distraction (triggering the shamens and other bosses melee, absorbing damage (5 AoE limit, I run with 6 minions + any jaggeds that are alive) or even having some use with their utilities, like snaring the veterans who push in the humans on the first part of the grawl fractal, the cliffside fractal keeping the archdiviner pinned down.

Nothing big, but I've managed to finish off the ascalon boss solo at level 28 from 1/4 health just by rotating minions and spamming both sets of weapon skills.

The Flesh wurm is great in the dedge fractal when running bombs, or the ice fractal. I tend to blow the bone minions up on recharge for 2 blast finishers.

One last quite important feature in PuGs is self survivability and since the fix to the blood thirst trait now effecting minions lifesteal I'm able to run full zerkers gear and feel like an AH guardian due to all the little green numbers constantly pumping my health back up. I actually feel that with this build my necro would suit Scholar runes more than my other characters that use them (war, thief, ele,) due to fact that in coming heals are constant from minions and all you own packets of damage too.

They do damage themselves, adding to mine which as full dps gear all adds up to an entertaining, relatively PuG safe setup.